Monday, June 8th 2009
Pirate Party Elected to EU Parliament
The Pirate Party silenced skeptics, gathering enough votes in the European Union elections this year, to make it to the Parliament from Sweden. This serves as a huge victory to the party whose ideology revolves around fighting harsh and archaic copyright laws and enforcement agencies, that it finds incompatible with the digital age we live in. The party secured 7.1 percent of the 99.9 percent districts' votes counted, which guarantees at least one of the 18 or 20 seats Sweden contributes to the EU Parliament. Sweden has 20 seats, but until the Lisbon treaty passes only 18 with voting rights. In this case, the party might secure 2 seats.
Rick Falkvinge, leader of the party, in a statement to TorrentFreak said "Together, we have today changed the landscape of European politics. No matter how this night ends, we have changed it." National and International press gathered in Stockholm, where the party celebrates its landmark victory. "This feels wonderful. The citizens have understood it's time to make a difference. The older politicians have taken apart young peoples' lifestyle, bit by bit. We do not accept that the authorities' mass-surveillance," Falkvinge added.
The voter turnout for the elections was 43 percent. Nearly 200,000 people voted for The Pirate Party, way up from its performance in the 2006 Swedish national elections, where it secured 34,918 votes. With their presence in the EU Parliament, the party wants to fight the abuses of power and copyright laws at the hands of the entertainment industries, and make those activities illegal instead. On the other hand they hope to legalize file-sharing for personal (non-commercial) use.
Source:
TorrentFreak
Rick Falkvinge, leader of the party, in a statement to TorrentFreak said "Together, we have today changed the landscape of European politics. No matter how this night ends, we have changed it." National and International press gathered in Stockholm, where the party celebrates its landmark victory. "This feels wonderful. The citizens have understood it's time to make a difference. The older politicians have taken apart young peoples' lifestyle, bit by bit. We do not accept that the authorities' mass-surveillance," Falkvinge added.
268 Comments on Pirate Party Elected to EU Parliament
Mailman has a valid, but very strong opinion on this matter.emphasis mine.Oh i love this guy. (again, emphasis mine)
4.0 GHz * 3 IPC = 12 GIPS
2.0 GHz * (3 IPC + 3 IPC) = 12 GIPS
Despite one having a faster clockspeed, they are equal in quality multithreaded apps.
MPH is a bad comparison because the greatest inhibitor to speed is air resistance. If you take the air resistance out of the equation, the amount of force is equal. If those two cars collided head on, the impact force would be equal to a single car hitting a wall at 200 MPH. Likewise, if they were bumper to bumper and hit a wall, the impact force on the car in the middle would be very close to 200 MPH.
If you're 200 MPH car only seats two people but your 100 MPH car seats four and you have to get three people from point A to point B, they would finish at about the same time (the faster car would have to make two trips to achieve the same end).
Equal in some cases yes - but we're talking a measurement of time. sure, two cars gets the job done twice as fast, but these people are saying that it doubles in speed. not that its equivalent in a perfect world, that its actually double.
2x2GHz = 4GHz.
2x100MPH=200MPH.
it doesnt equal it. 2x just means you have two cars at that speed. twice as much load, yes. twice as FAST? no.
anyway my pet hate is derailing this fabulous topic.
For cars: Your way of measuring "speed" is by MPH. My way of measuring "speed" is how long it takes to get the job done.
In the end, it is semantics.
They're simply adding "2.0 and 2.0" to make "4.0" which infuriates me. :laugh:
And they're only doing that because they really don't know what they're talking about. Ask them about clock cycles or workloads and they'll just look at you with a blank face.
Customer: "I'm a genius because I got a really 'fast' processor!" :D
...
Ads are bad source of information. :slap:
For all those who have lost or misplaced their eye patch I'll put a torrent link to mine up. But in all truth, the only thing I download regularly anymore is porn. A lot of porn too. But now with websites that offer free streaming like Youtube, well then I'm just out of things to download. I've got all this bandwidth and nothing constructive to do with it. Free streaming porn is forcing me into piracy! I've got all this bandwidth and nothing constructive to do with it.
Of course, according to Obama's administration, Canada is a lawless hub and safe haven for pirates and we have hordes of pirates here. Thus we've been blacklisted.
Actually 2ghz dual core does add up to 4ghz of "power" if you use the car analogy and consider power to be momentum. 2ghz dual doesn;t equal 4ghz speed is all.
But as anyone will tell you 2 cars with a 500 hp engine will be much more "powerful" than a single car with a 1000 hp engine. But electronics is very different from classic physics so that comparison obviously can;t be used here.
computers, computing power vs speed???? will a dual opteron be twice as powerful as a single? of course! will it be twice as fast? never!
Examples of failure would have to include prohibition and current drug laws.
2 - You don;t know if you like it until you try it.
3 - A cardinal sin, is greed (Yoda, i am!). Too much money is a bad thing according to some people and religions. We're not talking about 1 car here are we?
At least in society today. So piracy becoming normal is making it right to most.
Is/was slavery wrong?
The slaves in the US had slaves of other tribes in the their home country, thus the idea that they were victims is incorrect.
But is it right? Judged against the backdrop of the time it was right for many. And then those with power made it wrong, and the majority accepted this, so then it was wrong.
Is smoking right?
Not by the general populace, so we have more and more laws to regulate and control it.
Is drinking right?
By the majority in the US it is, however there are still "dry" counties and areas where it is not sold and is illegal to posses
Right and wrong as defined by a person, government, and general population is subjective to the time and feelings of that day, time.
Back to the thread, if the majority are pirating or wanting to handle media differently then the large corporations have little choice other than to try and change the minds of many, and or force their hand and risk the wrath of the user.
I would pirate a few games if I had known how terrible they would have been, test Drive unlimited for example. A total piece of crap. The studio who made it deserves to go under. Civ however continues to be a excellent game, as do many others.
Not saying I don't agree with you, of course.
We can't forget DRM which mandates copying not once (encrypted form) but at least twice (decrypted stream passing through the multiple caches of a processor, back to the system RAM, then linked to the audio device which may, or may not, also copy it to RAM on the audio card).
Does modern copyright even acknowledge all those required copy operations just to listen to a product which was lawfully purchased? Nope, this is why the MPAA and RIAA losing lawsuits is the norm, not the exception. In effect, the existing laws are only good at allowing publishers to harass consumers.
Seriously, I can't believe you are siding with the publishers and majority of politicians. It is bad for everyone except those with their hand in the money jar.
@Steevo: There is no right or wrong, only consequences.
Mailman: There's also being a dick. He just didn't list it. :p